Standing up to a challenging climate

Stella and her neighbors in Kenya struggled for years to farm in an increasingly unpredictable climate. Now, Stella’s family and her community are learning to increase their resilience and face these challenges head on.

Drissa’s land returns to life

Drissa Banihou, a farmer in Burkina Faso, West Africa, thought his land was dead. The 10 acres he had farmed since childhood had borne no crops in five years because of drought conditions. This year, his family produced 80 tons of sesame.

Areas of Expertise

Gender Integration

Lutheran World Relief is committed to addressing constraints that inhibit gender equity in our programming as well as in the communities with whom we work.

When womenand girlsare empowered to fully engage in productive economic activity and decision-making at the household, community and government level, their contributions have the potential to grow their local economies exponentially. Without equitable access to resources and services, women and girls are limited in their ability to thrive and to contribute to the socioeconomic welfare of their families and communities.

Analyzing gender gaps

Lutheran World Reliefconducts gender gap analyses to evaluate context-specific gender dynamics and establish strategies to close these gaps.Our projects:

Recognize that men and women (young and old) are change agents in their communities

Integrate a gendered approach into ourdesign, monitoring, evaluation and learning

Promoting Equitable Decision-Making

Although both men and women are actively engaged in agriculture in the developing world,women traditionally have had little influence in agriculture policies and practices. Lutheran World Reliefworks with producers to reducebarriers that limit rural women’s access to productive resources such as land, credit, inputs and services.Farmers are also taught to calculate women’s uncompensated contributions to agro-enterprises, allowing for better cost analysis. As a result, men are becoming more aware of how women contribute economically to farm operations, and women report that they more highly value their own contributions.

Gender in Design, Monitoring and Evaluation

Lutheran World Reliefprovides training tostaff and implementing partners, so they are able to incorporate gender considerations into programming and organizational culture.

Since 2012, Lutheran World Reliefhas developedtrainings and provided technical advising on gender integration through ourlong-termpartnership with Cultural Practice, LLC, a women-owned small business working in four primary practice areas in international development: gender integration, monitoring and evaluation, agriculture and food security, and health.